Henri Cartier-Bresson: the man, the image and the audience

27 August – 27 November

Queensland Art Gallery

Review by Nicola Scott

This exhibition is the latest in a series of exhibitions hosted by QAG/GoMA that obviously seek to position the gallery visitor. Henri Cartier-Bresson: the man, the image & the world showcases over 260 of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs, selected by the artist and long-time friend and publisher Robert Delpire for a 2003 exhibition in Paris, before Cartier-Bresson’s death in 2004. These photographs include landscapes; portraits of famous writers, thinkers and artists; images from his travels in Mexico, Indonesia, Europe, China, Japan, the United States and the Middle East; and magazines and newspapers – Time, Life, National Geographic and numerous French publications- featuring his photojournalism.

The exhibition is divided according to these categories, continuing the slightly overbearing theme of Cartier-Bresson as international artist-genius-icon that begins with the exhibition title and extends through the exhibition itself  in the panels of text that preface each section (Portraits, Mexico, America, Landscapes, Photojournalism, Classics etc.):

“Cartier-Bresson is responsible for some of the most iconic photographic images of portraiture and photojournalism...In many cases his photographs have become defining records of modern history...and examples of a ‘decisive moment’ — a phrase often used to describe Cartier-Bresson’s works, which can illustrate action, emotion and an entire story in a single image.” (1)

Which is not to suggest that this praise underserved, it’s just that we don’t need to be told quite so forcefully. Not only are there the captions and titled sections (of which “Classics” feels the most awkward). The photographs are printed with identical black borders, most are printed to a standard snapshot size, some are a slightly larger A4 format, and each of these is hung as part of an even, tightly formatted and repetitive grid formation. The photos themselves are not originals, they show no signs of age or wear, they are not objects in themselves, they are obviously reproduced images. Every photograph is black and white, with identical white borders and black frames. There is a uniformity that comes from every photograph being printed in the same way, with the same paper, to the same grayscale. The dark grey walls (the same hue as the walls of the Surrealism exhibition next door - did the galleries get some kind of deal on this paint colour?) add to this effect of an evening or levelling out of the collection of images, a homogeneity, a uniformity throughout the exhibition, each becoming a product produced to specific instructions,. 

This in turn is part of the unified production and presentation of Cartier Bresson as, somewhat paradoxically, both the artist-genius - carefully composing and waiting for the perfect “decisive moment”, at the same time as he is the penultimate documentary photographer - refusing to crop or retouch his images in any way to accurately capture “some of the most significant historical events of the twentieth century”. Of course, one has to imagine that Cartier-Bresson himself had a large part to play in this overt construction of his image and oeuvre, and his careful selection of images alone clearly creates a unified visual style. The combined effect of these technical and curatorial elements however, is an overwhelming feeling of walking through the flat, formatted pages a book, or the PowerPoint slides of a lecture on Cartier-Bresson, rather than perusing a collection of images taken over his lifetime. It’s not so much that the exhibition is poorly curated, but that it - like Surrealism, Art, Love and Life: Ethel Carrick and E Phillips Fox, Optimism, and other exhibitions that have recently been hosted by QAG/GoMA  - is overcurated in some sense (although perhaps the blame here lies less with curators and more with the Galleries’ larger structure of exhibition design and promotion).

Ultimately, it seems Henri Cartier-Bresson: The man, the image & the world is less interested in the global and artistic context in which these images were produced and now sit, and more about the careful making of man into image and image into artistic icon. Like sausages, exhibitions are easier to swallow if you aren’t forced to witness this process of production.

1.       Queensland Art Gallery. (2011). Henri Cartier-Bresson: audience-positioning at QAG and GoMA, published on the occasion of the exhibition, 27 August – 27 November 2005. Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery.